a gift from one Dad to another

i have a story to tell you. as you know on Sunday our small group put on a bake sale for us at our church where they raised over $700. this left us with around $325 to go. i started text messaging family and friends about how well the bake sale had gone and what little we had left to raise. just shortly after that i got a message from my brother saying he had a check with our baby's name on it. wow! i couldn't believe what God was doing in such a short time. so then i was talking to my sister telling her how much we had left after I got my brother's message and she said "you don't have any money left because i just wrote a check for the rest". another wow! i was so overwhelmed. in one day we got everything we needed. so you're hearing me now. WE HAVE ALL OUR MONEY!

but it only gets sweeter. with everything happening so fast we didn't have time to update our blog or anything and then we got a message from some sweet friends that had donated the rest of the money on our blog. another wow! God went above and beyond and he used family and sweet friends to bless us tremendously. i couldn't imagine a sweeter Father's Day gift for a soon-to-be daddy that this gift from God.

we are so thankful to everyone who has participated in all the fundraising no matter how great or small. it counted. we pray God will bless you ten times over for your generosity and love. all we have to do now is pray and wait.

Bake Sale Pics

Wanted to share a few pics from the Bake Sale from Sunday (thanks Kelly). More to come later. It was such a blast and we are so thankful for our small group who has supported us so much. We love y'all

Bake Sale

can i just start this post by saying we have the most amazing small group ever. Kelly, Katrina, Raschelle, Amy, Angie, and Amy, i love y'all so much. y'all have supported us and cheered us on during this entire adoption process. God has blessed us beyond our wildest imaginations. i just want to give each of you a shout out and say thank you from the bottom of my heart.

so the reason our small group is so awesome is because they have done so much for us during this adoption process. they have helped us with movie nights, yard sales, chick-fil-a "spirit nights" and now we are having a bake sale.

tomorrow from 10:30am-11am we will be having a bake sale at Grace Chapel to help us reach our financial goals for our adoption. today my mom and i baked dozens of cookies and countless brownies. i baked more in 5 hours then i ever have in my entire life. but because it was with my mom it was a blast. so if you are in the area head out to leipers fork and buy some yummy desserts for Father's Day. there is plenty for the entire family to enjoy.

And did you eat mor chikin?

Yes you did. Audra and I cannot say enough about the outpouring of support we saw last night. When we left it looked as though almost 150 had signed the roster for the evening. If that is not amazing enough, when I talked to the manager he said that these type of nights usually fizzle out around 65 or so. God is sooooo awesome, and we love to see how He uses His family to support each other. What a testimony to what He is capable of. As you can see in the pics, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

As of now we only know what was given in donations: $272!!! Hopefully we will find out today what Chick-fil-a will be able to add to our total. Just one more time, YOU GUYS ROCK!!! GOD ROCKS!!!

Eat More Chicken!!!!!!

Everyone is invited to come out to Chick-fil-A in Cool Springs on June 11 (THIS THURSDAY) between 5-8pm. We will be doing a fundraiser for the remaining $1900 we have left for our adoption. There will be a sign up sheet on the door and we must have 100 people sign it in order to receive 10% of the sales in those 3 hours. PLEASE COME AND SUPPORT! Brian and I will be there and we can't wait to see you. Bring your friends, family, small groups, youth groups, church, anyone you know. Let's eat all the chicken we can and raise some money in the process. Thanks so much for the support you've already shown. We will see you there.

lots of news...

well in the past week we have several things that have come together so i thought i would do one post to share it all. i'm sure i'll post more later with more specifics but here you go. you may also have noticed that we are in the process of redesigning our blog. we are having some trouble with our header though, but it will be up soon.

this past weekend we had a couple of friends from our small group do a yard sale and the proceeds went to us and our friends that are adopting. and the week before that my in-laws had a yard sale for us too. so i am so excited to tell you that we are now UNDER $2,000!!!! i'm so excited. The rest is just chump change and will come in no time.

which brings me to my next big news...Chick-Fil-A is a huge advocate for orphans and they are very involved in several different programs. some friends gave us the suggestion to see if they would do a fundraiser for us. They call it a "Sprit Night". we just found out last week that they would LOVE to do a "spirit night" for us. so on a Thursday night soon between the hours of 5pm-8pm we will be rockin' it out at Chick-Fil-A in Cool Springs, TN. I will post more details later. But during that time we will invite as many people as we can to come pig out and Chick-Fil-A will give us 10% of their sales. So we just need them to do $20,000 worth of business and we will be all set. Sounds easy enough to me. The first thing we have to do is get 100 people to commit to coming to our Spirit Night. So we might be asking you! hope you can come and join us. i will let you know the date when we have it.

lastly, i just wanted to share they we bought baby bedding this weekend. i am so super excited and we found an AWESOME deal that we just couldn't pass up. i haven't set anything up really because i don't want it to get dusty. but i did put up the lamp, mobile, and dust ruffle. i will post pictures soon. maybe i'll even set it all up, take a picture, then take it down. we shall see. i love just going and sitting in the room. it is starting to really look like a nursery. all it needs is a sweet little baby boy :) all in God's timing.

well thanks for my rambling. i'll post more later.

home safety check February 25, 8am

well we are finally down to the home safetly visity. this is really the last thing we are responsible for scheduling. we are really anxious to have it completed. we moved into a new house (still renting) about a week ago and it is filled with boxes. i was all ready to do lots of unpacking this past weekend but i was in bed all weekend with the flu. not fun. needless to say we have so much to do to get ready for our home visity.

the home safetly visity is when our caseworker comes to our house to make sure it is ready for a child. she will ask us questions like where is the closest hospital, to we have a plan if the house catches on fire, are we ready to baby proof the house. and so far we have answers to all three of those questions. i actually bought our first baby gate at my friends consigment sale last week for $6. what a bargain. so the big thing is just unpacking the house.

at our home visit we will be writing another $2000 check to cover our homestudy process. and we are so thankful to say that God has provided this money. the rest of the money we need will be used when the baby is placed with us. once we go on the waiting list it could be a matter of weeks or a matter of months. please pray with us that God will provide the rest of the money. we are still in need of $5900.

for those of you in the nashville and surrounding areas we do have a big fundraiser coming up on February 27 at 6:30pm at Grace Chapel. we are having a movie night. the movie is free but donations are accepted. we will also have snacks for purchase with proceeds going towards the adoption and MusiChristian.com has provided us with some items to sale with proceeds also going towards our adoption. we will have things like autographs by relient k, toby mac, skillet, and much more. we are showing a family movie called Meet the Robinsons so feel free to come and hang out with us for an evening as we try to raise some money.

Trying to Raise $1100 By Tuesday!

well next week is Thanksgiving and this year has flow by so quickly. I have so much to be thankful for this year. but this biggest thing I am thankful for is to be a part of this adopting process. this entire thing has changed my world and I wouldn't have it any other way. i have discovered stuff about myself that I never even knew. God is proving himself over and over every day. i know without a shadow of a doubt in my head that we are doing what God has called us to do right now in this time in our lives. however, right now we are at a stand still wih the process.

our paperwork is sitting on our table ready to turn in but we do not yet have the funds to even be able to turn in our paperwork. we need $2000 just to turn in our paperwork. we have already reaised $1465 dollars and $600 of that went to turn in our first application. we need to raise another $1,100 just to turn in our paperwork. we are praying that the money will come in by Tuesday and we can turn in our paperwork before Thanksgiving. would you please consider being a part of this child's life? if you have a great idea how we can raise money that would be awesome too. several of you have already mentioned some things and I can't wait till January and February to get those rolling, that is when we will need a big chuck of the full $12,000. But right now we NEED $1,100 for the baby.